Monday, December 31, 2007

Here I will compile a list of the books I read throughout the year. I will rate them on a scale of 0 to 5 - zero being horrible and five being wonderful. Perhaps this will be of interest to some of you. Or you can just see how much of a book nerd I am...Fiction:

If anyone ends up reading my blog, I think they will come away with a few things. First, I love to cook, read, and rant. Secondly, I am not very creative with titles for things. When I was still in college, I would tend to name my papers something along the lines of "Whatever Class This Is Paper One", I usually got good grades, but the title had nothing to do with it. I better never write a book - nobody would spend $21.95 on a book called "Jennifer's Book One". Ha.

Anyways, I started this blog after browsing through many other food blogs, and decided that I would enjoy having a (mostly) food blog as well. I am a (dairy-free) vegetarian who eats mostly vegan so a tiny fraction of my recipes are not completely vegan. Hence why I called this blog Veg*n, as I understand this encompasses both vegetarians and vegans. I will try to make sure to denote whether it's vegetarian or vegan, though I'm sure most vegans out there are very careful to make sure they don't consume any animal products, so this shouldn't be too much of an issue. As I said, I love to cook, and I am always looking for advice, feedback, and other recipes, so this is my contribution - I hope you enjoy.

This blog will mostly consist of my various food adventures, but you may get a rant from time to time, as I am an environmentalist and peace mongerer, and with the current state of affairs, people like myself seem to have a never ending stream of things to rant about.

Now down to business, the food! Tonight I will be making Kung Pao Tofu, which is very good. I found a basic recipe and had to have my way with it so it ended up being essentially a template that I used to create my own recipe. This recipe is vegetarian, not vegan, as it has honey in it. I am sure that you could substitute something else for the honey. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make this vegan and still have the same sweet and spicy flavor, let me know. I would like to work with other sweetners, but am not sure what has a similar flavor to honey.

I scaled this recipe so that there was more sauce, I'm not sure about anyone else, but most of the Asian recipes I have come across are very skimpy on the sauce, you generally have to make more than one batch anyway, so I went ahead and changed it for the entire recipe. The dish isn't the same if there isn't enough sauce to soak into the rice.

This is good as a leftover as well, I will be taking it to work for lunch this week.

In a large skillet or wok heat olive oil, add garlic, onion, and ginger. Cook about one minute. Add brocolli and snow peas. Cook another minute. Add tofu and sauce and cook a few more minutes, heating through.

Serve over rice or other grain, I like to use brown rice, but you can be creative and use whatever you like.

Well, that's about all I have for today. Have a safe and happy New Years.

Here I will compile a list of the books I read throughout the year. I will rate them on a scale of 0 to 5 - zero being horrible and five being wonderful. Perhaps this will be of interest to some of you. Or you can just see how much of a book nerd I am...

Non-Fiction:

A Cook's Tour- Anthony Bourdain - 5 out of 5

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle- Barbara Kingsolver - 3.5 out of 5

Better Off - Eric Brende - 4 out of 5 stars

Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin- Susan Reinhardt - 3 out of 5

Doing Nothing - Tom Lutz - 3 out of 5

Don't Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs - Edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman - 3 out of 5

Epicurean Simplicity- Stephanie Mills - 4 out of 5 stars

Fork It Over - Alan Richman - 3.5 out of 5

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany - Bill Buford - 4 out of 5

How to Be Idle: A Loafer's Manifesto- Tom Hodgkinson - 5 out of 5

In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan - 3.5 out of 5

Insatiable - Gael Greene - 3.5 out of 5

It Must Have Been Something I Ate - Jeffrey Steingarten - 5 out of 5

Plenty- Alisa Smith & J.B. Mackinnon - 3.5 out of 5

Radical Simplicity- Jim Merkel - 4 out of 5

Service Included – Phoebe Damrosch - 3 out of 5

Simple Prosperity- David Wann - 3 out of 5

Stuff White People Like- Christian Lander - 4.5 out of 5

Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn - Hannah Holmes - 5 out of 5

Such A Pretty Fat - Jen Lancaster - 3.5 out of 5

Taming the Tiger Within - Thich Naht Hanh - 3.5 out of 5

The End of Food - Paul Roberts - 3 out of 5

The Places That Scare You- Pema Chodron - 5 out of 5

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry- Kathleen Flinn - 3.5 out of 5

The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell - 4 out of 5

The Ungarnished Truth- Ellie Matthews - 4 out of 5

Trail of Crumbs - Kim Sunee - 5 out of 5

Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School- Katherine Darling - 4.5 out of 5

As I have stated many times, we all have our biases, mine will be pretty clear based on the following book recommendations. I read a lot, it is probably my favorite past-time. And since I'm a "super nerd", most of what I read is non-fiction. What follows is a list (that is, of course, not all inclusive), of the books that I have read that have been the most influential, informative, or enjoyable to me. If any of you read (or have read) any of these books, please do let me know what you thought of them. This list will be updated anytime I read something I feel is worth adding.

Non-Fiction

A Cook's Tour - Anthony Bourdain

A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations - Clive Ponting (The editor for this book was horrible, long paragraphs, poor sentence structure, etc., but it is a very good book nonetheless.)

A Return to Common Sense - John Ikerd

American Facists: The Christian Right and the War on America - Chris Hedges

An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire - Arundhati Roy

Better Off - Eric Brende

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond

Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures of Politics of Local Foods - Gary Paul Nabhan

Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things - William McDonough & Michael Braungart

Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future - Mark Hertsgaard